Drudge Headline: “WOLF WARNED: NO GANGING UP ON HILLARY IN VEGAS!”

[digg-reddit-me]Hillary is trying the play hard ball and coming across looking like a thug. Who could have predicted that? The full text of the current Drudge headline reads: “WOLF WARNED: NO GANGING UP ON HILLARY IN VEGAS!” The sub headline with a more complete explanation explains:

“CNN's Wolf Blitzer has been warned not to focus Thursday's Dem debate on Hillary. 'This campaign is about issues, not on who we can bring down and destroy,' top Clinton insider explains. 'Blitzer should not go down to the levels of character attack and pull 'a Russert.'' Blitzer is set to moderate debate from Vegas, with questions also being posed by Suzanne Malveaux... Developing..."

Drudge isn’t sourcing this yet, but it passes the “sniff” test in my opinion. And if Hillary’s campaign had done this, I would expect Drudge to break the news. He’s generally very good at the “inside ball” stuff within the press community. All reporters love to leak to Drudge. See a larger version of the image here.

For bonus points, Drudge was also prominently linking to a headline showing a new poll indicating that Obama and Clinton are in a statistical dead heat nationally. The link has come down since I’ve been writing this. The key difference in the poll is that Al Gore was included among the candidates respondents were asked about. Given this, Obama had a slight edge over Clinton. I don’t think this means that Obama’s winning, or that the Al Gore endorsement which I believe is forthcoming will put him over the edge. But it does indicate two things: the weakness of Hillary’s support; and the success with which Clinton has been able to use the “experience” card. Given another candidate with experience, Hillary’s support drops significantly.

Given all this, kudos to Obama for winning this morning’s news cycle “freak show” in spectacular fashion.

Update: According Drudge once again:

“Blitzer says he is not being pressured by any campaign: 'No one has pressured me. No one has threatened me. No one is trying to intimidate me'..."

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